


i wish i was worth what i know you deserve

by girlwiththeradishearrings



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Soccer, idk what this is?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 11:06:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4098733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlwiththeradishearrings/pseuds/girlwiththeradishearrings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which anya has a wicked fist and clarke tastes too much blood. and bellamy cleans clarke up. </p><p>(modern au where bellamy's the soccer coach)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i wish i was worth what i know you deserve

Ice water drips down her hand and onto the floor between her feet. She watches the drops leave her knuckles and patter onto the carpet.

 

_plunk._

 

She wants to cry—can feel the tears behind her eyes like a headache. She chooses instead to focus on the pain in her nose and lip. The blood has dried but she can still taste it on her gums and in-between her teeth.

 

When they stop in front of her house and pull over to the curb, Bellamy cuts the engine as an indication they're going to have a conversation. Clarke doesn’t question it.

 

Her curfew was thirty minutes ago, and her mom’s always peeved when she’s late coming home. On average, that would guarantee her a firm, but brief, lecture—five minutes at most—on punctuality, while Clarke scarfed down leftovers in the kitchen after practice, nodding her head passively to whatever her mother said.

 

But a lecture is a sweet far thing from what she’s bound to get when she arrives home in this condition.

 

The heater’s on full-blast. It’s hot on her scalp from where she’s hunched over, elbows propping her sagging body up.

 

The crown of her head rubs into the dashboard and Clarke releases all the air she’s been cradling in her throat.

 

“You’re getting water on my carpet,” he states blankly.  

 

Clarke’s fingers disentangle from her sweaty hairline and come away damp. “It’s just water.” The words slur themselves out from swollen lips, barely audible over the heater.

 

_p-lunk._

 

“And ’it’s just’ my car,” Bellamy retorts.

 

“Whatever you say, coach.” She gathers a wad of Gatorade infused saliva inside her closed mouth and lets gravity pull it threateningly close to falling. She swallows with a wince and knows the bitter film of spit coating her throat is tinged with blood. “Even without the min- _minimal_ water damage,” she forces around her thickened mouth, like she’s got ice cubes stuffed in her cheeks, “your car would still look like a piece of shit.”

 

He snorts. The car lapses into silence save for the low hum of the old rock station. The bag of ice in Clarke’s palm is leaking down the back of her hand and her skin stings from the cold. Her right eye is pulsing and she can feel how swollen it is.

 

Bellamy breaks the lull because Clarke sure as hell isn’t offering conversation.

 

“Okay, time’s up. Lemme see you.” He says, switching the overhead light on as he shifts in the driver’s seat to examine her.

 

Clarke flinches inwardly.  She doesn’t want him to see her like this; wearing her irresponsible rage and trigger-happy choices on her face.

 

With an exaggerated sigh to conceal how she truly feels, Clarke straightens from her slumped position and twists to stare at him with her good eye.

 

He’s holding back a curse, biting it between his bottom lip. He wants to say “ _Fuck, Clarke_.” in that frustrated, wound-up voice of his. She’s thankful he has more self-control than she does.

 

It’s not like Clarke doesn’t know how bad it is. She can feel Anya’s knuckles on her mouth, spitting her apart every time Clarke tries to swallow. She has a feeling she’ll be carrying the other girl’s fists around on her skin for awhile.

 

Bellamy reaches over the divide and takes some cheap napkins out of the glove compartment, the kind you get shoved in a bag with take-out. His face is sullen.

 

Wetting the napkin with his tongue, he leans forward with a corner wrapped around his index finger, ready to blot the crumbs of rusted blood from her mouth.

 

Clarke tries her best not to wince on contact.

 

Her upper lip is puffed up double what it normally is and her nose aches like a bitch, the right nostril is fat and tense with pain even though Clarke can’t really feel that side of her face anymore because of the ice compress he made for her in the locker room.

 

“First time getting the shit kicked out of you, Griffin?”

 

She glares and says nothing, just watches his face as he concentrates on dabbing her skin as lightly as possible. Clarke tries to imagine him doing this to all of Octavia’s wounds as a kid. The thought makes her kinda sad, for whatever reason.

 

He finishes wiping the blood from beneath her nose and moves onto her cut.

 

She sucks in sharply, flinching, when he grazes the split lip. Immediately stilling, he lifts his finger from the cut.

 

“Why’d you foul her?” He asks instead of proceeding to clean her wounds. He doesn’t lean back though, just stays hunched tensely over the gearshift, napkin crumpled in his fingers. Clarke shrugs imperceptibly, letting her eyelids—eyelid, singular—droop in mock disinterest, as if the question were irrelevant. “ _Clarke,_ ” he presses in the tone he uses on the field. She just stares past his shoulder, into the space beyond his window.

 

He’s doing that thing with his jaw, she can see it even in the dim lighting.

 

Realizing she isn’t going to cough up an answer, Bellamy turns back in his seat, knocking his head into the headrest. Clarke mimics him and jerks back into the stiff truck seats, knotting her fingers into her sweaty Ark High soccer uniform. It’s stiff with mud smears and browning bloodstains.

 

“It doesn’t feel good, does it?” He asks softly, “being this sad all the time?”

 

Her throat does this funny thing. It’s like a feeble straw being sucked on with too much force. It feels like the walls of her throat are being ebbed together slowly, like there’s only a splinter of space for air to rush into. Like those abrasive party toys that roll out and scream when you blow on them. Her throat wants to scream, but all Clarke can do is heave and suck in more air, collapsing the paper toy into itself. She doesn’t know how to exhale.

 

“I’m not s-sad,” she grits out with limp breath. Her fingers dig into the shorts of her jersey and her thighs tense under pressure. “I’m _angry_.”

 

“No. You’re not, Clarke.” Bellamy states in a tired voice. Rages makes her toes quiver in her cleats. “I know this year has been tough—“

 

“ _Ff-uck. You_.” She wheezes through the tiny straw in her neck, feeling seconds away from tears and hating herself for it. This only baits more anger and Clarke wants to shove herself out of the door and run home, her mother’s lectures be damned. She doesn’t want to have this conversation tonight of all nights. She already feels guilty enough for having Bellamy drive her home when he should be back with Octavia.

 

“Yeah. That’s right, Griffin,” he exhales, aggravated. Running his hands through his hair. “Fuck me, right? The person that hauled that crazy Grounder off you. You think you can play dirty? Think you can just swing at a Tondc girl like that? _You_ , who grew up in _Ark_ : with neighborhood patrols and parents who would put your wellbeing before anything else?” Clarke bites down on her lip, pressing her skull so hard into the headrest her neck spasms. “That girl grew up in the asshole of the world with no one to give a shit if she was okay or not. You think her life’s been easy? She had a fullride to Polis on a soccer scholarship. You think she’ll still have that after tonight? After that shit you pulled?”

 

“Shit _I_ pulled?” She practically barks, incredulous.

 

“You fouled her, Clarke. You knew what you were doing when you ran her down. And don’t pretend like you didn’t. I watched you. I saw your face.”

 

She can see his cheeks getting heated, even in the darkness. Or maybe she’s just seen him mad enough times now that she can picture it. His lips always get a little red, too. Like it’s burning him up. “Why’d you do it?” He cuts her a glare out the corner of his eyes. “We were ahead by two goals, you didn’t need to—“

 

“She was talking shit, Bellamy.”

 

“Big fucking deal,” he cusses. “So what? Players talk shit. O runs her mouth more than anyone.”

 

Self-conscious, Clarke rushes: “I couldn’t let her just—“

 

“That’s _exactly_ what you should have done. Let her feed you a load of crap, and you should have swallowed it like everyone else out there instead of acting like a child.”

 

Clarke’s at a loss for words. She’s not sure she could have said anything either because her throat’s so tight.

 

(The last time she cried was sometime in January, she thinks hazily. In the girls’ bathroom after lunch. For no reason, really. She’d started and couldn’t stop.)

 

“You’re right,” she manages to choke out after a minute, in a tiny wisp of her voice. Bellamy stays quiet, but she can feel his body ease somewhat beside her. “I know you’re right…. But—I don’t _understand_ —I don’t know _why_ I get like this…” Clarke is working to control her pitch. If she can’t keep steady, she’s going to crack. “I just… I wanted…”

 

“You wanted her to hit you.”

 

It’s not a question, so Clarke doesn’t answer.

 

“But. _Why?_ Why would I want that?” Clarke shakes her head with vigor, matted ponytail swishing against her back. She can feel the jersey number through her wet, chilled sports bra.

 

“Because you thought you deserved it,” Bellamy supplies with the kind of certainty that comes from experience. “You didn’t deserve that, Clarke.”

 

“But what if I _did_?” Voice pitching.

 

“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, okay? It was stupid. So fucking stupid,” he mutters into the palm of his hand as it drags across his exhausted face.

 

“I don’t understand why—it’s been eleven months, Bellamy. I shouldn’t let myself get like this anymore,” Clarke is scowling at her open palms. “I shouldn’t feel… _this way,_ " she gestures angrily with her hands. "Like I can’t speak to people without wanting to burst into tears. Like I can’t breathe. It feels like… someone’s pinching every muscle in my chest. It feels like I’m still where I was eight months ago. Like I haven’t processed anything.”

 

She’s stumbling through these words, feels her fists unclench as she tries to sort through the stacks of emotional baggage she’s left piling up.

 

Clarke doesn’t know why the debut of these revelations is right _now_ , let alone that they’re being disclosed to _her coach_. But Clarke’s afraid that if they don’t come out now, that they’ll continue to fester. “Please tell me… Please tell me that I’ll get better. That it’ll make sense.”

 

Bellamy is sitting very still and won’t meet her gaze.

 

“You’ll get better,” his voice is dry. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing along the column of his throat. “But I can’t tell you it’ll make sense. Because it doesn’t. It just sucks.”

 

Clarke's shoulders relax. It's like her entire body is being unwound like a jack-in-the-box that'd been cranked too tight. She feels her guts sink into her belly and the breath that leaves her chest is one that has been stuck there for eleven months.

 

Finally. The truth. 

 

It's as if, with those words, the entire map of emotions she's been drafting to better understand her grief becomes irrelevant. She's never going to understand it. Her dad's departure is just going to sit there. Right in the corners of her eyes. She's going to think it every morning when she wakes up and probably thirty more times by the end of the day.

 

 _It just sucks_. 

 

"It does," Clarke shakes her head, violently sniffing the snot that's building up in her nose. "It really fucking does." She tightens her fingers around the bag of ice (now mostly melted, there's a puddle by her feet) and feels very, very tired. "I gotta go--thank you for the... ice and stuff. I'll see you on Monday, okay?" Her voice is a feeble husk.

 

She's already shoved the truck's creaky door open with her shoulder and slides off her seat. "Clarke," Bellamy fumbles for a protest, but closes his mouth when he sees the back of her thighs. They're scraped and grass stained, her jersey too. She shifts her weight from leg to leg when she turns to face him, struggling to not show him the pain on her face.

 

He reaches down for the sopping plastic below the passenger's seat. He tosses it to Clarke, her hands fumbling for a moment before she cradles it to her chest. "Rest up."

 

She snorts. "Yes, coach."

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, i don't really know what's going on. 
> 
> (im not sure if this has a point? if anyone finds it, could you inform me?)
> 
> the title's from the song "oceans" by seafret


End file.
